I wrote yesterday about my mom’s singing. She sang all year round, but Christmas brought forth a few more joyous sounds than usual.
I’d like to share today a record than I never heard anywhere but our home. It was called “Organ and Chimes”. If artist names are anywhere on the disk jacket, I never noticed them. This record was a celebration of Christmas played on, yes, one organ and one set of chimes.
I found the entire record on Youtube recently. Well, maybe. There are a couple of candidates. I think that the record I (almost) remember was recorded by Charles Smart and James Blades.
Who says memories have to be perfect to be worth having?
So many of our childhood memories are associated with the senses, or with fragments of experience. For me, much of the Christmas preparation I remembered with my mother’s vinyl records.
My mom loved to sing. Any time she was awake was a good time to sing. But she didn’t listen to the radio or to records very often. Perhaps she enjoyed the freedom of setting her own tempo and letting nature give her sweet, natural alto the most comfortable key.
But there were a few LPs that came out at Christmas time. Youtube has given me a chance to engage the memories.
I want to begin with a single from a non-Christmas LP. Mom loved Harry Belafonte, and his rendition of “Mary’s Boy Child” remains by far my favorite.
Belafonte was born American, but spent much of his childhood with grandparents in Jamaica. He was a (perhaps the) central figure in the Calypso rage of the 1950s. Belafonte’s clear voice and crisp diction bring the text to the front of a gentle Calypso rhythm to create a song that simultaneously is humble worship, and infectious rhythm.
Enjoy.
Mom, wherever you are, let’s enjoy Harry Belafonte together again this year. Merry Christmas.
This week, I’ll give a few thoughts about Christmas in Canada. Today it’s Roch Carrier’s fabulous story “The Hockey Sweater” (“Le chandail de hockey”). The story was published in French in 1979 as “Une abominable feuille d’érable sur la glace” (An Abominable Maple Leaf on Ice).
Let me give some background to the story. The story is set, presumably, in Carrier’s childhood. At that time there were only two NHL teams in Canada. The Montréal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Canadiens had a monopoly on the best francophone players from Québec. Their sweaters were Liberal Red. And they were the greatest team in hockey. The Maple Leafs were essentially an anglophone team, wearing Tory blue. The formula was simple: the French Liberals cheered for Montréal; the English Conservatives cheered for Toronto. And Montréal won. Repeatedly.
More deeply, the story was published just three years after the first separatist government was elected in Québec, and one year before the first referendum on sovereignty. It was a time for Québec francophones to reflect on past injustices and their implications for the future.
On one hand, the story is nationalistic. On the other, it is a gentle and funny story about childhood, dreams and inclusion.
Here is a lovely short animated feature by the National Film Board of Canada. The Sweater.
